Fpweb.net Eases SharePoint Life-cycle Management
Some organizations have discovered the hard way that SharePoint is far easier to implement in theory than it is in practice, particularly when IT resources are scarce and training budgets have evaporated. Sure, Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) is easy to download and SharePoint Server requires a bit more thought, but either way, users may find themselves faced with a blank slate that they don’t know how to use. Even the initiated may discover they need immediate help or fast access to SharePoint templates, but have nowhere to turn. Rather than grappling with the inner workings of SharePoint, companies large and small are turning to Fpweb.net so they can spend more time innovating and improving business processes.
“A lot of times, people in organizations are ready to go, but because SharePoint isn’t easy to customize, developers can take as long as eight months to deliver the solutions business managers are looking for,” said Rob LaMear IV, CEO of Fpweb.net (www.fpweb.net).
SharePoint 2007 is complex to administer, and SharePoint 2010 is going to be even more complicated. Meanwhile, business managers are tired of waiting for SharePoint customizations because IT departments are busy putting out other fires. On the flip side, overworked IT departments are secretly dreaming of SharePoint genies who can help them get to market faster and reduce related costs.
Fpweb.net simplifies SharePoint adoption, deployment, maintenance, and customization, and the company can provide access to SharePoint server farms at a fraction of the cost of on-premise builds. More recently, customers have been using Fpweb.net for backup and production builds, or to operate disaster recovery sites. Entrepreneurs and innovators are executing proofs-of-concept, while heavily regulated organizations are turning to Fpweb.net for on-premise management. Some companies have even started outsourcing their SharePoint help-desk functions to Fpweb.net.
“Companies are hiring us to manage just about everything related to SharePoint,” said LaMear.
About 80% of Fpweb.net customers choose WSS while the remaining 20% opt for SharePoint Server (MOSS). Despite the dramatic cost differential and benefits delivered by the two options, LaMear said the size of the company does not dictate the choice of one over the other. As an example, a large delivery company chose WSS for document management purposes, but has since decided to migrate to SharePoint Server to take advantage of its powerful enterprise features.
Because Fpweb.net solutions are hosted, getting started is quick and easy even for those who lack technical prowess. WSS users are benefiting from better communication and collaboration and intranet and document sharing, while SharePoint Server users are enjoying world-class enterprise search, business intelligence and content management.
For organizations that prefer SharePoint Server, Fpweb.net handles everything from the build to customization and maintenance, which shields customers from the complexity. Customers can also avoid large capital outlays for expensive datacenter servers and support staff, purportedly reducing costs by as much as 60% when compared to internally managed systems. Fpweb.net guarantees 100% uptime and maintains world-class SAS 70 Type II certified datacenters, so customers can maintain biometric access-point security, as well as comply with PCI, HIPAA and SOX.
The big news is SharePoint 2010. Along with Microsoft’s formal announcement will be announcements of Fpweb.net’s support for SharePoint 2010 and a new SharePoint cloud computing service.
“All you have to do is give us the number of users and your storage requirements,” said LaMear. “There’s no need to talk about processors or memory.”
Fpweb.net will also be unveiling QuickStart SharePoint Business Suites, which LaMear predicts will be “game-changing.” It will include CorasWorks apps, Nintex workflows and AvePoint admin tools that streamline business processes. It will also have admin features such as reporting and auditing (Fpweb.net is teaming up with AvePoint for auditing and reporting).
Companies turn to Fpweb.net to manage just about everything related to SharePoint WSS and MOSS.
In the absence of using a hosted service like Fpweb.net, SharePoint users can get about 80% of the functionality they need out of the box, but it’s the remaining 20% that can hold up customized deployment for months. According to LaMear, QuickStart SharePoint Business Suites will give customers about 95% of what they’re looking for, which will dramatically reduce the need for one-off customizations.
“Users will be able to do more with SharePoint 2010, but it’s more sophisticated than SharePoint 2007, which means it can and will break,” said LaMear. “Customers are hiring us to take care of SharePoint so they can take care of business.”
Fpweb.net customers will not necessarily be migrating from SharePoint 2007 to 2010, because it’s neither prudent nor cost-effective. However, some customers will be launching new initiatives using SharePoint 2010 while maintaining existing deployments in SharePoint 2007.
LaMear expects migration from SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2010 to be a “challenging” experience for those who dare to manage the process in-house, particularly given that the migration from SharePoint 2003 to SharePoint 2007 was “painful,” and migration to SharePoint 2003 was “a disaster.”
To avoid pain and boost internal productivity, more than a million users are already relying on Fpweb.net. WSS hosting options are available for as little as $29 per month; MOSS hosting options start at just $795 per month.
The preceding copy was an excerpt from the fall 2009 issue of “SharePoint Sourcebook”, a supplement to “Software Development Times”. Used with permission.
